Forest issue? There’s an app for that

Scott Simpson, Vancouver Sun07.12.2012

FPInnovations, one of the world’s largest forestry research and development groups, is looking at how to apply new technology to the job of felling trees and bringing logs out of the woods.Mark van Manen
/ PNG files

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From bucksaws to chainsaws to mechanized falling machines, British Columbia’s logging industry has seen huge advances since the founding of the provincial government’s forest service in 1912.

The huge, noisy vehicles used for tree felling, trimming and log handling are getting close to optimal efficiency, depending on the cost of fuel relative to labour.

In response, many of Canada’s top forest sector researchers are focusing on other opportunities to ratchet down the cost of logging — including a focus on digital technology.

At an FPInnovations research lab located on the University of B.C.’s Point Grey campus, forest operations program manager Doug Bennett reels off a list of projects that resonates with anyone tracking the popularity of high-resolution mapping, cellphone apps and global positioning systems in other sectors of the economy.

FPInnovations is one of the world’s largest forestry research and development groups, a not-for-profit organization that works with both industry and the Canadian Forest Service on everything from wood products manufacturing to advanced wood-based construction methods and bioenergy development.

“Mills for years have had pretty sophisticated process control systems,” Bennett explained. “But when you get out to the bush, and you’re falling and skidding or yarding timber to roadside and loading on a truck, it has been sort of a visual, manual type of a process. There isn’t much technology in the past that has been applied to that process.”

The R&D lab is developing on-board computer systems to allow operators of harvesting equipment, such as the feller bunchers that mechanically cut and stack trees, to tap into satellite-based GPS, or global positioning systems, to determine the boundaries of the cut blocks they’re working in. Ultimately, it could eliminate the cost of group-based surveys to map out and mark the boundaries of those blocks with flagging tape.

“The other aspect of that system is to provide a means to get a record of production and productivity. It’s all about driving continuous improvement in your contract workforce. To do that you need information and you need to have an awareness on the operator’s part about how they’re doing out there, and get real-time feedback on their production and productivity,” Bennett added.

Mark Ryans, another FP program manager, noted that, “Half your cost is the fibre cost, the whole piece of lumber, so you have to make sure you are cognizant of reducing your costs on the fibre supply side.

“It’s the adage: You can’t control what you can’t measure. Quite often it’s just a machine out there at a very remote location, an operator on his own. This way you can essentially monitor what’s happening and send the data by satellite at the end of the shift, rather than weeks later following up on some measurements, scaling, what we call measuring wood, and finding out later what the actual operator did.

“It could be used as a big brother device, but that’s not what it’s intended for. It’s intended to improve the operation and get better utilization out of the machines.”

FPInnovations is also looking at improved methods for assessing the condition of forest roads. There are thousands of kilometres of forest service roads around B.C. and booms in other resource industries, such as mining and oil and gas exploration, mean many of those roads see more traffic than they were designed to carry.

In response, they’ve created a road-evaluation system consisting of both laser scanners and digital scanners, mounted on the roof of a van that’s also equipped with GPS technology.

They’ve also developed a cellphone app for logging truck drivers that can give them a full rundown on steep grades they will be descending with a full load of logs. It can tell them whether their brakes are up to the task of taking them down a 22-per-cent pitch, how fast they should be travelling as they approach it, and how much weight their truck can reasonably carry on that trip.

Laser-based aerial survey technology, or Lidar, is also enabling more detailed surveys of the forest land base, providing both an accurate model of the surface terrain and a digitized inventory of the trees that are rooted into it.

The technology is giving them “really good predictions of things like volume of timber for example,” Bennett said. “They’ve seen no significant difference between the Lidar-based estimates and the actual harvested volumes, whereas the conventional methods might have a variance of as much as 20 per cent compared to the eventual yield.”

The industry is also working to derive more value from the trees it cuts, such as chipping what used to be considered waste material — branches stripped from a log immediately after it’s cut — and shipping it to mills to burn for heat or generation of electricity.

“If you’re using it for heat applications, the amount of energy you’ve delivered is 30 to 40 times what you’ve expended,” Ryans said. “If you just make electricity you’re looking at 30-per-cent efficiency — but you are still way ahead of the game in terms of the biomass you’ve delivered. You get most of the value out of the biomass if you’re using the heat for your mill process, or you’re just using it as heat within a small community.”

University of B.C. forestry professor Dennis Bendickson, a third-generation logger who spent 30 years in the industry, expects the focus on maximizing the value of a stand of trees to intensify.

“If we are looking at the value of a stand of trees, 20 or so years ago we would have been totally concerned with solid wood,” Bendickson said. “Today we are able to manufacture a lot of different things in different ways — we don’t have to concern ourselves just with solid wood.”

Today, a wood veneer mill can turn a 10-cm diameter tree top — something that used to be burned as slash or sold as a Christmas tree — and chip it up for use in the construction of a manufactured roof beam or joist.

ssimpson@vancouversun.com

Twitter@ScottSimpsun0

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